trompe l'oeil
- A French term literally meaning "trick the eye."
Sometimes called illusionism, it's a style
of painting which gives the
appearance of three-dimensional,
or photographicrealism. It flourished from the
Renaissance onward. The discovery of linear
perspective in fifteenth-century Italy and advancements in
the science of optics in
the seventeenth-century Netherlands enabled artists to renderobject and spaces
with eye-fooling exactitude. Both playful and intellectually
serious, trompe artists toy with spectators' seeing to raise questions about the
nature of art
and perception.

This story originated in ancient
Greece:

Two painters were rivals in a contest. Each would
try to make a picture that produced a more perfect illusion of
the real world. One, named Zeuxis [ZOO-ziss], painted a likeness of grapes
so natural that birds flew down to peck at them. Then his opponent,
Parrhasius [pahr-HAY-zee-us] brought in his picture covered in a cloth. Reaching
out to lift the curtain, Zeuxis was stunned to discover he had
lost the contest. What had appeared to be a cloth was in reality
his rival's painting.

Cornelis Gijbrechts, Reverse Side of a Painting, 1670, oil on canvas,
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen. This type of still life painting was known in 17th
century Holland as a "betriegertje" or little trickster — the vehicle for playing a practical joke.

Claudio Bravo, Neptuno (Blue), 1998, lithograph,
image: 30.7 x 23 inches, sheet: 38.2 x 29.5 inches, published
by Marlborough Graphics, NY. This is one in a series of six lithographs,
called "Demi Gods": Venus (Black), Vesta
(Sanguine), Ceres (Sepia), Eros (Red), Neptuno
(Blue), and Flora (Green). This might remind you of the story told above about the painting by Parrhasius. See monochrome.

When trompe l'oeil refers to
a sculpture, it is one made
so much like its subject
that it might fool the viewer into thinking that it is the original subject. Sculptures
by Americans Duane Hansen (1925-) and John DeAndrea (1941-) are
paintedcasts
made from models
to which real body hair are attached, Hansen adding real clothing
and props.